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Koos z'n Doos
The history of BBS Koos z'n Doos in Dutch can be found at Geschiedenis BBS Koos z'n Doos and screenshots can be found at BBS Koos z'n Doos schermen. You are viewing an (attempted) translation in English. First experiment November 1990 I did the first experiment running a BBS: in a week my parents were on holiday I ran the BBS a few evenings. I put up a sign at school. One fellow student (I never knew who) wrote "Koos z'n Doos" on that sign. That name stuck. My own phone line Somewhere in 1991 I got a phone line for the BBS on which it could run 24 hours per day. CoSysop Lennart Herlaar Somewhere in the first few years Lennart became an active user on the BBS and became CoSysop. On more than one occasion he visited my parents when I was away to reset the BBS computers. Internet e-mail and usenet access In 1992 I joined the hacktic UUCP network with real Internet e-mail access. After some failed tests with uucp under Minix I configured Waffle under MS-DOS which was also available as 'door' program so users of the BBS could use e-mail and usenet. A cd-rom drive Walnut creek cd-rom saw a market in making collections from Internet ftp archives available on cd-rom. I bought a secondhand cd-rom drive and integrated it into the BBS so suddenly lots of extra download was available. Modem upgrade: 14k4 19 August 1992 I got a Supra 14k4 modem. In a 'Sysop deal' I was able to order this directly in the US. Networking BBS computers In November 1992 I bought 2 network cards. Clone versions of the WD8003 8-bit network card. Ethernet networking finally became somewhat affordable for home users. December 1992 I networked 2 computers together for the BBS. One ran the server (Netware lite) and one the client. I was able to access the BBS, read messages and do everything while the BBS was still available to callers. Echomail networks Together with other students I started our own echomail network aimed at exchanging information for students. More diskspace The BBS could always use more disk-space. In February 1993 bought a 245 megabyte harddrive: it was a special offer at a computer fair. But since they ran out of stock already I had to go buy it at a remote warehouse in the north of Utrecht. This disk ran in the BBS server continually for years. The first time I tried to use it afterwards it was completely dead. Second phone line In October 1993 a second line was opened for the BBS. The old 2400 baud modem ran on that line. For this line there was a simple PC-XT with just a floppy drive, modem and a monitor. Everything ran via the network. An even faster modem In July 1994 I bought an 28k8 modem, the new standard, also as a Supra 'sysop deal'. The 14k4 modem moved to the second line. A new BBS server on Linux In the mean time I learned about linux and samba file sharing. The new BBS server was a 486 dx/2 66 which ran Linux. The clients ran the DOS version of the lan manager client which was quite hard to find at the microsoft ftp site. The new BBS server had a harddisk of a stunning 4 gigabyte. And: it did not hang like MS-DOS+netware lite did. A CD changer In November 1995 I bought a cd-changer (Nakamichi mbr-7) for adding lots of download space to the BBS. Moving to a new place In January 1997 I moved to Utrecht. The BBS moved along and got new phone numbers. OS/2 For a while I ran the BBS under OS/2 warp 4. Most of the software (Binkley, Maximus) had OS/2 versions. The End In January 1999 I announced the end of the BBS to the left-over users. The main reasons were that the usage of the BBS had dropped steeply (mainly due to Internet) and I had a girlfriend at the time leaving me with little time for maintaining the BBS. Category:31 Category:BBS